After the recent Special Election in New York's 26th Congressional District, speculation abounds whether the presence of a third-party candidate in former Democratic Congressional candidate Jack Davis, running on the TEA Party line, hurt Democratic nominee and Representative-elect Kathy Hochul or Republican candidate, Assemblywoman Jane Corwin, more.
Our data analysis of both a pre-election poll conducted by PublicPolicyPolling for DailyKos on May 5-8 and of recently released precinct data from Niagara County shows that Davis was a centrist candidate who, in all likelihood, drew support from both candidates equally.
In the pre-election PPP poll, where Davis was still polling much stronger than he ended up being, an analysis of respondent ideology and voting intention shows that Davis was mostly the choice of moderate voters. In line with these findings, we couldn't find any correlation between the support that Jack Davis received in Niagara County precincts and the support for President Obama in the 2008 Presidential election, nor did Hochul under- or overperform the President where Davis was strong.
As Mr. Davis' support would have had to break for Ms. Corwin by a better than 2-1 margin to change the outcome of the election, it appears unlikely that the race would have had a different result had only Ms. Hochul and Ms. Corwin been on the ballot.